To Forget It All And Begin Anew: Reconciliation in Occupied Germany 1944-1954, by Steven M. Schroeder

Abstract

To Forget It All And Begin Anew: Reconciliation in Occupied Germany 1944-1954, by Steven M. Schroeder. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2013. xiii, 237 pp. $29.95 US (paper). It is German Evangelical theologian Hans Asmussen that Steven M. Schroeder owes the title of his insightful new book. In a letter penned the Allied Control Council in 1946, Asmussen captured the spirit of many of his countrymen when he pleaded with occupation authorities grant his conquered nation a chance move on and escape troubling questions about the Nazi past--a chance to forget it all and begin anew. As Schroeder makes clear, however, the Allies had intention of permitting the German people forget, but instead made the acknowledgment of responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era a prerequisite for any steps toward national self-determination. Yet if the German public was largely hostile any acknowledgment of collective guilt or responsibility for National Socialism, how then did the post-war Germanys so successfully transform themselves into peaceful and powerful members of the Eastern or Western blocs? According Schroeder, this metamorphosis, which he describes as one of the most remarkable events of the twentieth century, was propelled a significant degree not just by government and military officials, but by non-governmental organizations whose role in the post-war process of reconciliation largely has remained overlooked until now (p. 3). Schroeder's book elucidates the vital contribution of NGOs of various stripes and in all occupational zones, but pays particularly close attention those that were faith-based yet at times pushed political agendas. Schroeder's argument is that this highly varied host of grassroots organizations succeeded in spurring reconciliation between the German people and the victims of Nazi persecution and aggression by creating meaningful face-to-face dialogue and relationships; these involved a level of trust that state and military authorities generally had been unable forge. Schroeder begins his book with a look at the relief efforts of the Protestant and Catholic churches in occupied Germany and the aversion of the churches any acknowledgment of German guilt or responsibility. He argues that a spurious perception of the antifascist credentials of both the Protestant and Catholic churches led the Allies grant them a leading role in the moral reeducation of the German people. In reality, however, church leaders showed themselves be singularly uninterested in leading their parishioners take ownership of the Nazi past, and instead helped fashion a self-serving image of German victimhood Nazism that would endure for years come. As evidence, Schroeder points in part a remarkable letter from Protestant Bishop Theophil Wurm the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he described the Allied treatment of the conquered German people as no different, in its essentials, from Hitler's plan stamp out the existence of the Jewish race. …